Opaquely, Bossier govts defuse, issue threats

Operating squarely within their histories of lack of transparency, Bossier Parish and Bossier City’s legislative organs recently tackled controversial legal issues differently, one to the benefit and one to the detriment of the citizenry.

The Police Jury appoints a member to the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District, and that current term expires at the end of the month. Held at present by Robert Berry, controversy arose when, two terms back, Berry and his fellow commissioners appointed him also as executive director. This eventually caught the attention of the state’s attorney general as a violation of dual officeholding, and after a protracted legal battle this spring the Louisiana Supreme Court instructed lower courts to rule along those lines.

Even so, the district’s Board of Commissioners petitioned for Berry’s reappointment. Perhaps one reason was, according to public comments made at their meetings, it had become dependent on Berry to make and execute decisions on its behalf, and another maybe being that state law would force Berry if leaving the Board to resign as executive director, as a former member generally of a state board can’t be employed by it until two years pass after end of service, so commissioners wanted to keep him in that job.

But that wish simply didn’t comport to legal reality. At the meeting, a parade of Berry’s and the District’s lawyers (it’s uncertain to this point how many taxpayer dollars they have burned on trying to fight the state’s case, but it’s certainly into six figures and probably a tenth or more of all District expenses annually over the last two or three years), other commissioners, his friends, and family spoke about how great of a guy he was and how great of a job he had done and how the decision hadn’t actually kicked him out of office, all arguing for reappointment.

However, legal advice rendered by lawyer and area political insider Neil Erwin to the Jury reminded, if not understated, that eventually it was a virtual lock that the judiciary in the future would find Berry in violation. Erwin, rather than the attorney assigned by the district attorney’s office to serve as parish attorney, Patrick Jackson, delivered this message, which was unusual in that Jackson rarely misses a meeting and only two weeks earlier had busted a gut to return from the east coast in time to attend that previous meeting, yet was absent for this one.

In early June, the Jury formally had solicited applications for the post, drawing half a dozen applicants for vetting. All but one spoke to the Jury, making the one who didn’t conspicuous by his absence – Rodney Madden, a local business owner and 2019 campaign supporter of Republican Juror Philip Rodgers. Although Rogers financed that campaign with mostly his own and some family resources, Madden had made a testimonial video supporting Rodgers. Additionally, Rodgers was one of the public complainers about Berry having too much influence by default over the Board, where he, rather politically guilelessly, said Berry had made certain representations that came as a result of Rodgers’ political position that now the Board he accused was trying to renege upon.

Madden, it was asserted, was out of the country on vacation and couldn’t appear in person although he sent along a short video segment – filmed by GOP Jury Pres. Doug Rimmer – introducing himself. It would seem odd that somebody who followed the Berry case and felt committed to offer services as a result, understanding importance of letting the Jury publicly vet him, would have scheduled a vacation at the very time he would have known, because of his interest in the appointment, that the appointment would be made. That behavior seems more consistent with someone who hadn’t considered the matter until asked relatively close to the opening of the search process to offer his services and who had assurances that to receive serious considerations that jurors didn’t need to vet him publicly.

Whether this signaled the fix was in, at least one applicant thought the fix in fact was in. Andy Modica, who actually in past and present has been appointed to several positions in government by the Jury, testified he had been told jurors already have decided upon someone, not him. Rimmer then said he didn’t doubt someone had told Modica that, but claimed it was “news” to him who the mysterious slam-dunk appointee was.

Yet there was a slam-dunk appointee, when all was said and done. Rodgers nominated the missing Madden and he received at least seven votes in favor – recall that the Jury, despite having a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, refuses to set up anything but a rinky-dink cellphone-driven narrowcast Facebook Live transmission system for meetings so it’s impossible to tell who or how many votes are cast on measures without actual physical attendance, until the minutes are approved weeks later.

That takes the issue of Berry being the Jury’s appointee off the table for fall juror elections – and without the timing of the end of the five-year term happening to be months before the election, without that spotlight Berry might have won a third term leading taxpayers to fork over more dollars to defend his lost cause. Of course, other election issues remain such as having Parish Administrator Butch Ford apparently illegally registered to vote at a place that is not his residence that disqualifies him from holding the job with the Jury’s tacit consent and jurors illegally serving on the parish’s Library Board of Control.

Still, at least Madden legally may hold the position and has the potential to serve well, making the action a victory for the parish residents, most of whom pay directly or indirectly property taxes to fund the District. Things didn’t turn out so well for Bossier City residents in the previous day’s meeting of the Bossier City Council.

There, a Council majority followed through on making a formal request to ask for an outside legal opinion on petitioning for a charter change to install term limits, despite the fact that the Charter and state Constitution allow for the process followed, and that the two propositions that limit officeholders to three lifetime terms don’t unconstitutionally violate retroactivity prohibitions on criminal or penal laws. It came up as a Council matter as a delaying tactic designed to push farther into the future to a lower-stimulus election date the inevitable election that must be called, which could increase the chances of its defeat.

But even more than that, rhetoric from City Attorney Charles Jacobs and others indicated, arising from questions asked and unasked, beginning with why Jacobs brought the matter in the first place. It certainly wasn’t at the behest of Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, who in the course of discussion made clear he was for term limits and wouldn’t impede their adoption. It therefore came from at least one councilor, as the Charter permits that.

More blatantly, as articulated by GOP Councilor Chris Smith, why did the Council have to do something formal about this when, just in the past month, without seeking Council approval, Jacobs had engaged outside counsel on another matter? Jacobs’ response never addressed that discrepancy.

However, what it did do was reveal the endgame strategy behind the request that could benefit at least four of the five who voted for the resolution, who with adoption of the proposals all would become ineligible to serve any more terms. Essentially, Jacobs issued a veiled threat, apparently reflecting the thinking of the Council graybeards, by invoking the long-running dispute over the establishment of the city of St. George within East Baton Rouge Parish as what could happen.

Of course, significant differences exist in these two cases, where St. George’s centers on a judgment call whether demands in state law were met in the petitioning and election that approved the city’s establishment, but Bossier City’s term limit proposal is cut-and-dried valid. Still, the idea of launching costly litigation – weaponizing city government at taxpayer expense precisely to attempt thwarting the will of the people – visibly was put on the table.

This scorched earth strategy to save four part-time jobs hopes best case to wear down those backing limits – who may have to retain counsel to sue the city if the Council doesn’t approve of term limits in its next meeting or fails to place the matter on the Nov. 18 ballot by Sept. 25 – so that they give up or to delay matters to a lower-stimulus election, and worst case to string things out so much as to buy another term possibility for the graybeards. Regardless, bringing about such litigation would be a selfish, self-interested response by a handful of governing elites that, in attempting so hard to get around the clearly valid rules in place, questions the very fitness of such persons to serve in office.